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A review of Bart Ehrman's defense of his book

M.S. Bruce at Bruce4Truth.com has written a brief review of a lecture he heard by Bruce Ehrman in defense of his book Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why". Our own Layman has already written his own Non-Flattering Review of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus which I recommend everyone interested in this book read. What is interesting about M.S. Bruce's blog entry is that (I have it on good information) he is a theology student, and rather than review the book, he is describing what he heard at a lecture defending the book. His take -- very similar to Layman's take.

His concluding paragraph gives quite a bit of the flavor of his account of the lectures and the question and answer session:

In closing I would like to know, Mr. Ehrman, how do you draw these conclusions from the textual variants? How can we trust any ancient text by the standards that you judge the New Testament? On what grounds do you identify additions to the text? Why do you make blatant and erroneous denials regarding the Deity claims in the synoptics? Why can't you understand basic metaphysics regarding the Trinity? Why would almost all of the apostles die for what they knew to be a lie? Most of all, why do you base your personal beliefs that Jesus was not God and that there was no resurrection on such poor arguments that are laced with untruths, circular reasoning and unwarranted conclusions?

That is absolutely a foolish statement. Peter and Paul were both unquestionably executed by the Romans around 65 A.D. and both clearly preached a resurrection (a few silly arguments to the contrary notwithstanding). I certainly agree that there is less evidence for the martyrdom of the other apostles, but your blind discounting of the possible legitamacy of the teachings of tradition demonstrates your simple refusal to give any credit to sources of information you choose to disbelieve.

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